When it comes to placing ads on Facebook, it takes more than just making the purchase and hoping for the best. This is especially true if you are using images or video as part of your advertisement. In order to get the most for your money, you’ll need to understand just what exactly is going to work for your needs.

Over the past few years, buying advertising on Facebook has become one of the standards by which small businesses and entrepreneurs have been able to reach a wide number of people on this social network. For those who have been successful, the results have been quite remarkable.

Creating your own Facebook page however, which is where many of your potential customers will visit must abide by some of the rules that this social network has set up as well in terms of picture or image and video sizing. By following some simple guidelines, you can find yourself creating the most viable Facebook page possible so that you can attract the most customers.

Creating Your Facebook Page

As easier as it is to start a blog, it’s even easier to create your own Facebook page. All it takes is a few simple clicks within the Facebook platform and filling in the requested details as you walk through their simple wizard process.

This is not only good for businesses and entrepreneurs, but also anyone who wants to create an attractive Facebook page for their hobbies, interests or other endeavors so that they can show them off to full effect.

Facebook Cover Photo Size

Your cover photo is the image of your business or endeavor as seen by others. When it comes to what people will notice, your cover photo is going to stand out.

Recommended Size: 851px x 315px

Ideally, your cover photo should be something that represents your business such as the building it occupies or perhaps the task that it performs.

Profile Image

This is the image that is placed in the lower left corner of the cover image on your home page. In addition, every post you make will contain your profile image. You’ll want to choose the best profile image possible for your business efforts. An easy to read logo or symbol is a good start and will be easily recognizable by those whom you interact.

Recommended Size: 180px x 180px

Your profile picture will be displayed at 160px x 160px, but you’ll want to oversize it just a bit so that you can move it around until it is the most flattering.

Remember that your Facebook cover photo size as well as your profile image not only need to be correct, but they will be something that you will not change over time save for rare occasions. This is because your cover and particularly your profile image are ones that your audience will instantly recognize. However, if you can do a variation of the image such as for the holiday season that makes for a nice change of pace.

Shared Images

The amount of space available is roughly 504px maximum width while the height will vary to a certain degree. If you put up a narrow image, you might see some gray space added to either side which will distract from the image.

Recommended Size: 1200px x 1200px

This will be more than large enough to fill the space and provide good clarity to the images that are being shared.

Shared Link

If you are sharing links in the form of photos or images, then you’ll need to meet the minimum level of 484px x 252px.

Recommended Size: 1200px x 628px

This will ensure that the link is large enough to be easily seen and recognized. In this manner, important links can be advertized effectively along with the content of your post as well.

Shared Video

Here, the size of the video cannot be adjusted and it will display at 504px x 283px, although when loaded up on YouTube for example and shown, the viewer has the option to increase the size of the video to full screen on their mobile device or computer.

Desktop and Mobile Device Ad Sizes

This is arguably the most important part of your efforts in terms of reaching people who use either computers or mobile devices. Despite their growing similarity, the difference in computing power and screen size still means that you will need to post the right size of images for your efforts.

Desktop

Recommended Size: 1200px x 628px

Remember that there is a 20% limit on the text in the image, so be sure to post one that is mostly clean of text. Plus, if the size of the image is smaller than 470px x 264px, Facebook will render the image as a thumbnail and you’ll lose valuable size when viewed by the potential customer. Remember that if you do not load the image to the exact dimensions recommended, Facebook will crop to the center part of the image which may leave out valuable information.

Page Post Image

Recommended Size: 470px x 470px

Again, load to the recommended size so that Facebook does not crop the image.

Page Post Event

Recommended Size: 1200px x 444px

The same conditions as to the Page Post Image applies here as you are limited on 20% text and having Facebook crop your image if it exceeds the recommended size.

Page Post Video

Recommended Image Size: 1200px x 675px

In addition, Facebook will only load a 1GB video, so this will only work on short videos or those that have been substantially compressed.

Mobile App Ad

Recommended Size: 1200px x 628px

Again, you are limited to no more than 20% in terms of how much text can take up the space in the image. Plus, this will only run on mobile ads, so don’t expect any carryover to desktop or laptop computers.

Overall, you will need to experiment a bit within the confines of Facebook ad rules and regulations. The 20% Rule that Facebook has about text is one that applies to all ads, so you’ll need to be careful not to exceed that amount. From the Facebook cover photo size to choosing the right amount of text for your next advertising effort, following the rule of Facebook will help you select the right balance to get maximum results.

With almost 300 million users on Twitter, it’s all a numbers game. The more people that you have following you, the more your messages, blog post updates and tweets will be seen.

Unlike Facebook, when you send out a message on Twitter, ALL of your followers are going to see your message — and most importantly, you don’t need to pay money to send out messages or to guarantee they will be sent out to all of your followers.

Before we jump into how you can increase your Twitter followers by using JustUnfollow.com, let’s first take a look at some of the killer numbers that make up Twitter today:

284 million monthly active users

500 million Tweets are sent per day

80% of Twitter active users are on mobile

77% of accounts are outside the U.S.

Twitter supports 35+ languages

Vine: More than 40 million users

Now that you’ve seen some of the mind staggering numbers and the volume of people out there that could be following you and your brand, let’s get to work!

How to Get More Twitter Followers with CrowdFire
(Previously known as JustUnfollow.com)

JustUnfollow is a service that makes it easy for you to manage your social following on Twitter (and Instagram too), while also making the most out of who you follow and finding new contacts as well. In this article we are going to cover the basics of how you can use JustUnfollow to grow your Twitter following by looking at your competitors audience.

First you are going to need a JustUnfollow account. JustUnfollow is free and upgraded plans start at $9.95 a month and go up depending on how many accounts you want to manage.

1.) Create an Account or Login to JustUnfollow

Once you visit JustUnfollow, you will have the option to sign into their site through Instagram or Twitter. After clicking your preferred method, you will then have to grant access for JustUnfollow to login through your Twitter/Instagram account. Once you confirm YES, you will then be setup and active with your own JustUnfollow account.

2.) Click on the “Copy Followers (Grow)” Option

Once you are logged into your account, you are going to see plenty of options for you to choose from.

Since we are focusing on how to get more followers in this article, we are going to look at the following two options that appear in your left side menu.

Copy Followers (Grow)

Keyword follow (Grow)

Each of these options will allow you to grow your following, based on your competitions following, or by showing Twitter users based on keywords they’ve mentioned.

3.) Follow the Recommended Twitter Users

After clicking on either “Copy Followers” or “Keyword Follow” you will see the form like the one shown in the screenshot above.

In this example we are looking at Twitter users who are following @Wordpress, since they would likely be interested in following our @BloggingDotOrg account as well.

Once you put in another Twitter accounts name, and click SHOW, a list will then appear of all of their followers. You can then start clicking on the green plus button to follow that user.

The process may seem tedious, but if you are a fast clicker you can get through 1,000 clicks in a few minutes time.

JustUnfollow does a good job at weeding out dead accounts and showing ones that are more likely to follow you back. The goal here is to follow several hundred to a thousands users from related accounts and seeing how many you can get to follow you in return.

Don’t be surprised if you end up getting over a hundred followers per day using this method.

4.) Repeat the Process Every Few Days

Once you’ve followed around 1,000 Twitter users, you are going to hit the daily limit and Twitter will block your access to following more accounts for the day. The next day after you’ve followed these accounts, you can then unfollow everyone who hasn’t followed you back.

WARNING: It is possible that Twitter may detect your massive following and unfollowing of accounts and can ban your account, so be careful.

Another great feature of JustUnfollow is the ability to track how many people are following and unfollowing you on a daily or weekly basis. These reports can be seen within your account or emailed directly to you.

How to Get More Twitter Followers

Keep in mind, this post was focused on how to get more Twitter followers by using the JustUnfollow service. The site also offers many other features such as tracking who is following you and also offers the ability to setup automatic direct messaging.

I’m sure plenty of you have seen the horrible services out there that promise 10,000 followers for $30 (or whatever)… those are all garbage services that just sell fake bot followers. If you want to grow your Twitter following with real users, the process I laid out for you here is one option.

The goal here with JustUnfollow is to follow real accounts that are potentially interested in what you have to offer, and unfollowing those that don’t — in short, this method takes some time, but they are legitimate and real followers.

One final note… just getting 100 new followers to your account per day using this method, is an extra 3,000 followers per month!

Facebook contests are a great way to create excitement around your product. They give you the opportunity to connect with both new and already established audiences, as well as to increase engagement on your page.

While they have the potential to yield great results and big increases in activity on your page, Facebook contests have been regarded as more work than they’re worth in the past.

This doesn’t have to be the case anymore. Fortunately, with Facebook’s growing popularity and the increased activity of both users and marketers, different companies have developed a wide variety of apps that make hosting contests easier and more effective than before.

Why Facebook Contest Apps Make Your Job Easier

Instead of spending time struggling to adjust settings and tabs on your page, and then struggling to create a landing page to collect the information of those entering, apps take care of everything for you.

While you now have the opportunity to run contests on your actual timeline as well through a series of posts, app usage is often recommended for the most beneficial Facebook contests overall.

Though you can launch contests on your timeline quickly and freely, and fans can often enter with likes or comments, more long term benefits tend to come from contests utilizing apps. This is especially now that Facebook is making efforts to do away with like–gating.

Using apps make it easy for excited users to enter. They don’t have to go through your old posts to find the one they need to interact with, because it will be a separate tab on your page. Having a single page for your contest makes it easier for users to share with their friends, giving your Facebook contest the viral momentum everyone aims for.

Having an actual page for users to enter your contest will look professional, clean, and can show off your brand. There’s also an appropriate place for contest rules if need be.

One of the most important benefits you get by using a third party app for Facebook contests is that it generates real leads, with full names and e-mail addresses. These will be leads you can nurture into clients and sales, making the investment of your contest worthwhile. Timeline contests often don’t get personal information; few people are willing to leave their e-mail, home address, and/or phone number in a comment for everyone to see. This benefit alone makes paying for app to run your contest on Facebook worth it.

Best Apps to Choose From

There can a lot of apps out there to choose from, and because of that, we compiled a list of our top 5.

Wishpond is currently most popular choice in apps for marketers on social media, and with good reason. With big name companies like NPR and Avon utilizing Wishpond’s social media apps, it isn’t a surprise their product is nothing short of outstanding.

They offer a variety of features, including real time reporting and easy moderation over posts. They also have incredible mobile friendly pages that come with each contest you create. As far as Facebook contest apps go, Wishpond’s could easily be the best.

Pricing is extremely affordable, the basic plan starting at $45 per month with a 14 day free trial to let you see if it is the right fit for you.

Facebook contests and promotions are just a small area of expertise for Shortstack, who boasts all types of successful campaigns on social media. Like Wishpond, they offer a ton of different contests you can run, giving you a lot of options.

Their Facebook contest app is known for successfully implementing action-gating, which is collecting priceless information like customers’ email addresses, birthdays, and more. Since this is one of the biggest reasons to use a Facebook contest app, this factor alone makes them rank highly on our contest app list.

With Shortstack, you can manage your contests easily. You can set entry restrictions, reduce voting fraud, and select winners (and more) at random all through their platform. They help you make your pages mobile friendly. Their list of features is truly impressive.

Not only do their contests both run and look great, their support is fantastic. If you need any help creating or managing your campaigns, a member of their staff will get to you quickly.

Shortstack offers incredibly competitive pricing, their basic package starting at only $29 per month and providing unlimited campaigns. You can create a few free campaigns to test out their system.

Agora pulse focuses on Facebook apps that will generate activity and engagement on your page. If you only looking for an app for contests and quizzes (and not added features landing pages, for example), agora pulse could be for you.

They offer 15 stunning templates that you can customize to take your campaign to the next level. Their features include boosting the viral potential of your contest, easy implementation of multiple languages, the ability to quickly identify (and disqualify) cheaters, and easy exports for all the information you collected with your entry forms.

As your campaign progresses, you can monitor its success. As your campaign progresses, agora pulse will even give you information like when is the best time to post on Facebook in order to reach your fans. You can also compare your page’s campaigns to those of your competitors. With the information available, you can quickly see what works and what doesn’t in order to improve your campaigns in the future.

Their basic plan is $29 per month and includes access to unlimited apps.

WooBox is designed to help you easily create powerful contests, creating a sweepstakes tab on your Facebook page. The templates for these promotions are premade to satisfy all of Facebook’s policies, so you don’t have to double-check everything you are doing as you create the contest.

They help you set up your entire contest, not just display it on Facebook; you can set up your contest so that it has an age restriction, one-per-customer restrictions, and translations into different languages available. The forms are all completely customizable, meaning you can get as much information as you want for lead generation. Their contests all come with mobile friendly sites, too.

WooBox has a variety of pricing plans. Per month plans start at $49 per month, and you can try it for free before you pay to get started.

Tips To Make Your Facebook Contest Successful

While apps make your Facebook contests look professional and can add to the excitement, all types of Facebook contests are valid and can generate great results depending on what you’re looking for.

These tips will work for all types of Facebook contests, helping each one reach its maximum potential.

Pick a Prize that Matters: You’re not going to enter a contest for a prize that you don’t even care about winning, so why would anyone else? When you’re picking a prize, it needs to be something of value to those you want to enter. If a car dealership’s big giveaway was an ice cream cone, that might be underwhelming, but if a local ice cream parlor was giving away an ice cream cone users would likely be enthusiastic about entering.

Promote your products: You’re trying to attract or reconnect with people who would be interested in your product. Using your product—or something relevant—in a sweepstakes or giveaway gives you the chance to have users get excited about your product in particular.

Use promoted posts: You can pay to promote posts through Facebook’s ad system, and it lets you target both audiences that you’ve connected with and those that you haven’t. Promoted posts allows you to make sure your contest is getting the kind of reach you want, and can help increase your page likes and contest engagement.

Be optimized for mobile users: Mobile usage surpassed desktop usage earlier this year. By having your contest not optimized for mobile users, you run the risk of losing a lot of potential entrees and leads. A lot of apps even make sure that your site is mobile ready for you, so take advantage of that if they do.

Create a sense of urgency: If you want someone to act, you need to give them a reason to, and time can always be a great motivating factor. You don’t want to have your contest over so fast that no one realizes that it’s happening, but having a contest last for a short period of time will encourage users to act now before it’s too late (or, more likely, they forget).

Promote your contest cross-platform: When you’re investing time and money into a Facebook contest, make sure everyone knows about it—even those you may not be connected with on Facebook yet. Mention the contest in your newsletter, on your YouTube channel, on your Twitter page, on your Instagram, and on your website. If you operate out of a brick-and-mortar store, mention it there, too. Talk about it everywhere to get as many people entering and giving you their information as possible.

Remind your fans it’s there: You don’t need to be reminding your fans that you have a Facebook contest every two minutes, but reminding them more than once over the duration of the contest is important. Organic reach has declined on Facebook, meaning less people are seeing what you post to your timeline. Posting at different times every so often, and definitely on the last day, can help everyone see and remember to enter your contest.

Creating of social bookmarks is a vital tool which can assist individuals in discovering their content online without searching for it everywhere. It is also an extremely effective tool which online marketers use for creating back-links to their sites.

This post covers some of the finest websites for the creation of social bookmarks which website owners can make use of. Before talking about the social bookmarking sites, it is advisable to talk about some key points concerning the social bookmark submission.

Social bookmarking websites can be used for several purposes such as:

Creating user profiles and completing them with all necessary details along with the website URL.

By means of social bookmarking, you can promote any excellent content material you discover online

You may also promote your own material such as blog posts or videos.

You can join different existing groups in your niche or you can form your own group.

There are a considerable number of social bookmark management sites out there on the internet. The fundamental concept continues to be the same, however; the themes and online communities differ from site to site.

Digg

It is the largest social bookmarking arena on the web. The communities seen on this platform are a lot more technology-driven. You can publish content material relevant to a significant range of other topics. You can, however, have a chance of rendering it to the home page of the website.

Delicious

Delicious can be known as a labeling site more than a social bookmarking website. It is one more amazing platform for creating back-links or generating targeted traffic for a website.

Reddit

Yet another social bookmarking website has been erratic with regards to achievements despite the fact, it is among the largest and has a significant volume of website traffic.

Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is presented by Yahoo Corporation. It takes benefit of the massive yahoo community. If you are able to get to the home page of this Yahoo Buzz, you can push the substantial volume of targeted traffic to your website.

Mixx

This website has not received as much consideration compared to other social bookmarking websites. However, it is still a wonderful site where you can distribute content. You may also join the communities if you would like to direct readers to your site.

Stumble Upon

This site is as distinctive like its name. It facilitates individuals “stumble upon” unique material on the website which is relevant to the topic of their choice. For online marketers, this is a place to share content so that others users or webmasters can come across it.

Newsvine

It is a fantastic website for individuals who create news related stories. If you have a new website or launching a new product or service then it’s the best platform to start your marketing campaign.

After viewing this list of resources, be sure to run through our guide on how to start a blog. After all, what good is learning about how to promote a blog on social media, if you don’t have a blog of your own?

Disclosure: We are a professional information and review site that may receive compensation fromthe companies whose products we review. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.